Kennedy and Missouri cases consolidated

The two big censorship cases, Missouri v. Biden and Kennedy v. Biden, are now consolidated. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. won that consolidation yesterday from Judge Terry A. Doughty, who is hearing both cases.

The Kennedy consolidation

The Memorandum Order came down on the Missouri case side. (See the docket page for the Missouri case and the Kennedy case.)

In his order, the judge observed that the two sets of plaintiffs were suing the same defendants, asking the same questions, before the same judge. The only differences were in stage of preparation. Judge Doughty has granted a preliminary injunction in Missouri but had yet to do so in Kennedy. But besides that, the individual plaintiffs in the Missouri case did not want consolidation. They were afraid that the involvement of a high-profile plaintiff – and Presidential candidate – would somehow prejudice them. The plaintiffs spoke of “unnecessary politicization,” “political wrangling,” and a “tabloid atmosphere.”

Judge Doughty, while he did not exactly disagree, said any possible prejudice was second in importance to the convenience and economy that consolidation could achieve. He did not say the Missouri case is already politicized, as it bore mention in the recent Weaponization Subcommittee hearing. That hearing turned positively raucous, and not merely because Kennedy was testifying and the Democrats didn’t want him to. For when they weren’t trying to eject him, they were trying to defend government censorship without calling it by that term.

Earlier efforts to join the case

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had been trying to join the Missouri case for a long time. He began in November 2022 with a motion to intervene. When the judge ultimately denied that motion, he and his Children’s Health Defense organization filed their own lawsuit. At the time they filed it as a class action. Judge Doughty has recently denied class certification in Missouri, because he found he couldn’t define a class that wouldn’t include every adult American user of social media.

About the image

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .